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Chimeras have been mentioned before in posts such as this one, but no one has mentioned interspecies chimeras involving animals, but they do exist! In 1984, scientists fused an embryo of a sheep with an embryo of a goat, and created a creature in which some cells have the DNA and features of a goat, and some have the DNA and features of a sheep. They've done this several times, and get a different combination of sheep/goat body parts each time.
Here are some examples:
Goat/sheep chimeras are different from goat/sheep hybrids because goat/sheep hybrids are created from the fusion of one goat gamete and one sheep gamete, instead of two sheep gametes and two goat gametes. You would think that there would be more goat/sheep hybrids if it was possible, but apparently most goats aren't attracted to sheep. When they are, we get something
like Lisa here:
Who looks quite different from her mom:
You can read more about Lisa here.
There are also human/mouse, human/pig, and human/cow chimeras, which are used mostly in medical research, and generally will only have human kidneys, hearts, or blood, respectively. There is an article about this here, and a very, very interesting podcast about it here.
Here are some examples:
Goat/sheep chimeras are different from goat/sheep hybrids because goat/sheep hybrids are created from the fusion of one goat gamete and one sheep gamete, instead of two sheep gametes and two goat gametes. You would think that there would be more goat/sheep hybrids if it was possible, but apparently most goats aren't attracted to sheep. When they are, we get something
like Lisa here:
Who looks quite different from her mom:
You can read more about Lisa here.
There are also human/mouse, human/pig, and human/cow chimeras, which are used mostly in medical research, and generally will only have human kidneys, hearts, or blood, respectively. There is an article about this here, and a very, very interesting podcast about it here.